the environment, and
that necessarily implies a conflict as well as an alliance. The
preservation of the fittest, which is surely a good thing, is merely
another aspect of the dying out of the unfit, which is hardly a bad
thing. The feast which Nature spreads before us, according to Malthus's
metaphor, is only sufficient for a limited number of guests, and the
one question is how to select them. The tendency of morality is to
humanise the struggle, to minimise the suffering of those who lose the
game; and to offer the prizes to the qualities which are advantageous
to all, rather than to those which increase and intensify the
bitterness of the conflict. This implies the growth of foresight, which
is an extension of the earlier instinct, and enables men to adapt
themselves to the future and to learn from the past, as well as to act
up to immediate impulse of present events. It implies still more the
development of the sympathy which makes every man feel for the hurts of
all, and which, as social organisation is closer, and the dependence of
each constituent atom upon the whole organisation is more vividly
realised, extends the range of a man's interests beyond his own private
needs. In that sense, again, it must stimulate "collectivism" at the
expense of a crude individualism, and condemns the doctrine which, as
Professor Huxley puts it, would forbid us to restrain the member of a
community from doing his best to destroy it. To restrain such conduct
is surely to carry on the conflict against all anti-social agents or
tendencies. For I should certainly hold any form of collectivism to be
immoral which denied the essential doctrine of the abused
individualist, the necessity, that is, for individual responsibility.
We have surely to suppress the murderer, as our ancestors suppressed
the wolf. We have to suppress both the external enemies, the noxious
animals whose existence is incompatible with our own, and the internal
enemies which are injurious elements in the society itself. That is, we
have to work for the same end of eliminating the least fit. Our methods
are changed; we desire to suppress poverty, not to extirpate the poor
man. We give inferior races a chance of taking whatever place they are
fit for, and try to supplant them with the least possible severity if
they are unfit for any place. But the suppression of poverty supposes
not the confiscation of wealth, which would hardly suppress poverty in
the long run, nor